Monday, 4 December 2017

High Plait counts

24 plait

I did it again, I went over to the dreaded FetLife and signed in, I found a thread relating to what was a proper whip and what said proper whip should be in order to be said proper whip..as usual written mostly by a whole heap of self appointed, stuck right up themselves, pseudo experts, self appointed is of course the best kind of appointment, I have never read so much dross, crap and poor quality advice in all my life, what an absolute awful nasty place that is, I know not why I torture myself by signing in......grrrrrr, there you now know what to get me for Christmas, a few big spoons of self control, I seem to of lost mine...

24 plait

The trouble with these self appointed experts is that there is little if any authority to dispute their spewed nonsense, the only real authority if you can call it that is the A.P.W.A or to give it it's full title The Australian Plaiters & Whipmakers Association

So the A.P.W.A is not what it used to be not since Kerri & Chris Barr left, this stopped the forums and a really fantastic flow of information, I haven't been a member for many years now, once they started appointing no name American makers as moderators and that type of thing it started to go a little down hill in my opinion, I must admit I always struggled with it as they have the name *Australian* in the title and Australian I very much am not, there should really be a UK &EU Plaiters association or WhipMakers association methinks!

Anyway yet again I digress according to The A.P.W.A a 20 plait and above should be considered a show whip and that I very much agree with, I should explain really a whip is whatever diameter you make it, usually an Ozzie style whip is 20 made 22/23mm at the but end and tapers, in a snake and signal from the getgo and in a bullwhip from the transition, give or take, so the formula to work out how wide the laces are you use is the same be it an 8 plait or a 32 plait or whatever plait, the same amount of leather is used its just a matter of how many strings you divide that leather by, moving on from that you don't need to be the brain of Briton to figure out the smaller the laces you use the weaker they are...It's not as they say rocket science. Look below you'll see what I mean?

64 Plait

8 plait

And so there is the dilemma the latest trend is for high plait count whips, in say a cat of (, an angel Maker, a Western quirt and a few other this is no real problem, the plait count doesn't come close to coming in contact with the floor so is in no real danger of any rough treatment, most whip makers including myself will go as high as you are prepared to pay for, some charging absolute fortunes..the real problem comes in whips and in particular longer whips where the end trails on the floor, all of a sudden folks find strings breaking and then expect the chipmaker who made the whip to fix it and not only that but free of charge too, the only real way of getting over it is to have the conversation with the customer before the sale of the whip or refuse the order. I remember being a party to a conversation (via email) between well known Australian Whip Makers Mike Murphy and in the UK well known whip vendor Purple, Purps was going mad that Murphy wouldn't sell him a 7 foot 32 plait whip after he had in effect bought albeit to sell on hundreds of Murphy whips, it got quite heated but Murphy stuck to his guns, he was right because if you talked to Purple he freely admitted he intended to use it and at that length and that plait count it was only headed for the one bin, the one marked broken...

So for me, I'll do it if you're happy to pay for it but we will be having a conversation first and the price you pay will not include free repairs....JustSaying